Hey! And guess what, I accidentally made the same joke as you did in this thread because it took me a minute to get your (much better) Truman Capote joke!

People are probably trying to figure out if she’s pretty enough to be worth reading.

They’re fantastic and nothing like the covers suggest. The covers are actually intended to be kitschy (please be warned that there are some spoilers in that article before you click on it), which might sound a little insufferable, but trust me, these books epitomize the old adage, “Don’t judge a something by its…

It’s Harper Lee.

Read the Neapolitan Novels, they’re great!!

If that reading scheme isn’t some infinite bullshit, I don’t know what is! Where does your poor niece go to school, Mississippi in 1902? I would have lost it too if I were your sister.

Ewww ew ew! You know who ELSE called his kids sexy? (Donald Trump, is who.)

Insightful and hilarious, as always!

Awww, thank you so much! I hope you’re right. I love your comments too!

I don’t disagree with you that the book sounds like a crock of shit, and I’d be down with a letter to the publisher too! But I prefer the approach of using the crock of shit books as conversation starters (your kids will encounter those books, anyway; plus, there are a lot of great books that promote some shitty…

Awesome comment and your username is to die for!!!!

Eurasian Studies must cover a lot of ground! That sounds awesome! I hope you’re getting treatment that will help you speak up in class, because from your comments it’s obvious that you’ll have tons to contribute. Some more advice (which will either be something you’ve heard before but might be helpful to remember, or…

I hope he was! It could definitely have been a “whatever I have to say to shut you up” kind of email, but I think all of us do and say microaggressiony stuff we don’t even notice sometimes and a lot of us would rather we didn’t. I think if I were the karate teacher, I would have been defensive initially and then…

Congratulations! What will you be studying?

Yes! Sometimes it seems like there’s an inverse correlation between how often people dish it out and how well they can take it. I can think of one particular neon-combovered, short-fingered, fascist example.

Damn, you have the best field of study ever! I wish I could hire you to tell me obscure bedtime stories every night! (Unfortunately, I’m going into special ed, which is unlikely to pay “personal fairy tale reader” money.) That ogre story sounds awesome and very Samson and Delilah-esque. Will you please tell me the…

Haha, I just made a similar point about gender (except “external sex organ” is better terminology than mine.) Anyway, I’m not an expert on gender reveal party norms, so I’m sure you’re right! But shouldn’t they have at least had the doctor make an extra copy instead of leaving the ONLY copy at the bakery?

I wonder if it’s a ploy to get more free stuff for your kid. (Which I respect, but why not throw a “gender identity should be liberated from essentialist notions about behavior and preferences, and also may not correspond with the baby’s biological sex” party? I guess a party like that could get a little insufferable,…

I think there can be a lot of educational value to be gained from racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. books. You learn a lot about the cultures and attitudes that produced those books. (Like, if you’re a historian specializing in Nazi Germany, you’re gonna have to read Men Kampf.) I see what you’re saying, though. There…

One of my relatives had one of those. But the parents wanted to be surprised by the gender too, so they have the doctor write the baby’s gender on a piece of paper and stick it in a sealed envelope. They give the sealed envelope to a bakery, pre-order a cake for the party, tell the bakery to open the envelope and use…